10 Tech Tools to Teach the Common Core Standards

The Common Core State Standards initiative was state led and coordinated by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers to create benchmarks for learning from kindergarten through grade 12. The standards themselves “were developed in collaboration with teachers, school administrators, and experts” and are divided into two separate sets of standards: English language arts and math. The English language arts standards also include history, science and technical studies.

The Common Core State Standards seeks to develop students who:

– Demonstrate independence

– Evaluate complex texts

– Possess strong content knowledge

– Communicate effectively

– Comprehend and critique

– Locate and use evidence effectively

– Feel confident solving real world problems

– Understand other perspectives and cultures

– Apply their existing knowledge to new situations

– Use technology and digital media strategically and capably

According to the Standards, teachers must teach and students must learn using relevant technology that students will need to succeed beyond high school.

5. Google Docs and Forms – Shared documents are perfect for group collaboration on a piece of writing. Forms can be used to create specific forms and rubrics to help students provide each other with quality feedback.

18 Responses to 10 Tech Tools to Teach the Common Core Standards

I live in Maine and the high school my children attend uses this website both in class and for homework in English– specifically for writing and reading. My kids are getting more and more assignments with notes to parents about these new standards. One letter home explained how the Assessments21 software helps with “close reading and analysis for non-fiction, fiction, and poetry.” I am a former teacher, as is my wife (she has a Master’s in Education). We are really excited to see our kids (reluctant readers) engaged.

I teach high school language arts and I too find Academic Merit (earlier comment) invaluable — http://www.academicmerit.com. It is especially helpful teaching close reading, vocabulary, and written-response. Not only that, but it is quite complementary to the Common Core.

I really appreciate this list of tools for teaching to the Common Core. I too chime in about Academicmerit.com . It is something that I have added to my toolkit as I work with students who are becoming independent learners. Not only are students using this interactive software, but several of my challenged learners are successful in their general education classes because of this supportive website and program.

My favorite tool for creativity and critical thinking (a huge component of the Common Core) is Pixie from Tech4Learning. They have an online version called Wixie https://www.wixie.com/wixie . My students love using the paint, text and clip art tools. There are also narration and background music tools within the progrem. In addition to all the creative possibilities, there is also an awesome collaboration tool built in. If anyone is going to ISTE this summer in San Diego, be sure to check out the many poster sessions featuring the CCSS (including mine-“Making The Common Core Uncommonly Exciting”).

Hello,
Thanks for adding Creately to the list. We do have real-time collaboration now making it much more attractive for teachers to interact with students. Also the link just under Creately is giving a page not found error. Thanks again for featuring us.

I have checked Collaborize Classroom and it looks fantastic. I think students can learn a lot from each others’ feedback and also, it is very important to improve their writing skills (I can say it from practice since I get in touch with numerous students at superiorpapers.com and they talk about their issues in their writing abilities). If they start practising it early, I don’t think they will have so many problems later on in higher education.